Technology Corner

Not only do baby-tracking apps make it easy to capture every aspects of baby’s life, they also make it extremely easy to share baby’s data with all caregivers. In fact, it is automatic. Once you set your first caregiver account on one of these apps, you can then invite and authorize additional caregivers.

Nearly all U.S. adults now have the needed technology — a cell phone — to send and receive texts. Text messaging is simple and familiar. Not only is nearly everyone able to send and receive texts, most people text regularly and are therefore comfortable with the practice.

It’s been 17 years and 95 articles. 17 years ago the term “health information technology” was not in vogue. The intent of our column has always been to inform readers about emerging technologies that can support their practice immediately, while not venturing into bleeding-edge technologies that are not ready for widespread implementation or are too risky for you to devote scarce resources to.

Americans have a history of coming together in times of great need. KatrinaHealth.org was created shortly after the storm hit to provide a central point of access to evacuees’ prescription histories by authorized healthcare professionals. In less than a month, 150 organizations pulled together to create the site (including businesses in competition with each other). Today, we are still impressed by the collective effort — enabled by health information technology (HIT) — that provided critically important information to support the continuation of car

A quick Google search for “popular tech gifts of 2016” returns a very large number of lists from a variety of authoritative sources. While we sometimes recommend tech newbies stay away from the bleeding edge items, there are a number of popular tech gifts that are ready for prime time usage by even the latest tech adopters.

We absolutely know you don’t have time to have your head in the clouds, envisioning a future scenario where technology allows you to morph your practice into another unanticipated level. We also fear that many of you are spending most of your waking moments in the weeds of survival in your practice, while changes are afoot that can dramatically impact your business.

The healthcare space continues to evolve, partially in response to the increasingly numerous and glaring shortfalls patients experience in terms of poor outcomes. Possibly an even greater driver to the changes you are experiencing in your practice is the continually rising cost of care. A single healthcare dollar can be divided into an array of expense areas, including inpatient hospital stays, nursing home and home healthcare costs, administrative fees, and physician and clinic services. Did we forget medications?

We will start this column with a few questions, answers, and interesting facts. In the United States, what would you guess is responsible for more unintentional deaths than cocaine and heroin combined? Opioid analgesics. In 2013, what caused more deaths than homicide? Prescription analgesics. While the United States accounts for approximately 5% of the world’s population, it accounts for 80% of the world’s opiate use and 99% of the world’s hydrocodone use.

Ten years ago, RadioShack was celebrating its 84th year of being in business and was thought of by many as the “go to” place to see new technology. Even though they partnered with Sprint, they couldn’t command enough interest in this world today, where smartphones are the mainstream focus. Didn’t they know that the wearable technology and the Internet of Things was where everything was heading? Didn’t they know that Amazon was going to supply nearly every component of their inventory and ship it quickly without charging sales tax?

Do you realize that it’s been nearly 10 years since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published the initial “foundation” standards for electronic prescribing (eRx)? But how do we compare to other countries?

A graduate student here at Auburn is studying optimal methods to deliver information to patients about the medications they are taking. When we began looking into this topic, we were quickly reminded what a confusing mash of terminology is used in this space.

With the new year, we want to start with what we have seen in 2014 and then look ahead for this year. 2014 was a critically important year for pharmacists, in the form of H.R. 4190, the legislation that is poised to bring provider status to pharmacists.

So now we come to the next frontier that is being labeled “The Internet of Things.” IBM thought leaders have been talking about the world possessing a central nervous system, with everyday devices generating a constant flow of data.

One of the articles in a recent issue of iHealthBeat described a study conducted by Geisinger Health System. In the study, patients were allowed to review their medication lists for accuracy and completeness before seeing their doctor.

Today, we are immersed in a completely different Web experience, known as Web 2.0. This modern-day Web is very different from the Web 1.0 world. Individuals have literally thousands of free tools available to create and share Web-based content. Whereas organizations spent large amounts of money to create content in the Web 1.0 world, anyone reading this article can build an engaging Web experience using free tools right now.

Many pharmacists are so “in the weeds,” in that they are being consumed by the daily minutia of their operations, that we think it may be time for vendors to take a stronger position that will help prepare the profession to face a very different healthcare future.

We recently read a report from Accenture that really got us thinking about what patients expect from their pharmacists and pharmacies. The report is titled “Great Expectations: Why Pharma Companies Can’t Ignore Patient Services.”

Times are changing in healthcare, and it’s still early enough in the year to add a few resolutions. Think about each of these changes and challenge yourself as to whether you have aligned your practice accordingly.

People fail in their self-care management behaviors (including medication behaviors) for three reasons: (1) they don’t know what to do; (2) they don’t know how to do it; or (3) they are not motivated to do it.

Your competition has likely gone so far beyond you in the world of connectivity that it’s time for you to consider moving to a level that improves your patient communication, engagement, and participation activities significantly. We suggest that you work through the following checklist and consider your priorities for adopting our suggested changes.

How do you define “quality” in your practice? Might it be measured by the average wait time your customers experience, by the percentage of patients offered additional clinical services, by the hundreds or thousands of prescriptions accurately filled between misfills, by the percentage of patients receiving medication doses outside of recommended doses, or by some other measures ...